Sports Academy: Training with multiple coaches can help a player blossom

Paige Ayers is an example of someone who received supplemental training at TSS for years and then went into its full-time Elite program for 2 years before university. Paige also played on the provincial team when she was younger and is now an impact player for Quest University in Squamish Photo taken at the TSS our facility when Paige was quite young.Photo by
Brendan Quarry

Two coaches are often better than one.

Especially in Canada, where club soccer tends to only train twice a week — in comparison to European clubs practicing four to seven times a week. So in order to get in the extra hours, young aspiring soccer players often seek out additional training, outside the club environment.

“Different coaches bring different approaches to the game,” said Roman Tulis Jr., president of Burnaby’s Roman Tulis European Soccer School of Excellence. “Getting away from one coach and having a variety of coaches that have different strengths is beneficial.”

Tulis’ soccer school is just one of many private academies offering supplemental training to youth players across the Lower Mainland — something that’s highly recommended and supported throughout the B.C. soccer community.

“Certainly we support extra training,” said B.C. Soccer’s director of soccer development, Michael Findlay. “If you go around the world the ratios of training vs. game play are much higher in other areas than ours.”

“The Canadian player in general lacks the ratios that are required for proper development both in the high performance and the grassroots stream.”

According to Royal City Youth Soccer coach, Shawn Cody, that extra training is what propels players forward in development.

“To become proficient with a soccer ball ... it’s only going to come through the repetition of muscle memory, doing things over and over,” he said. “By attending an academy, by attending extra training you’re being forced to practice, to train, to build those skills that are only going to come through repetition.”

SPARTAN ACADEMY

So with that in mind, the New Westminster-based coach sought out more training for his NW Barcelona girls soccer team. He first started with a partnership with Richmond’s TSS Academy, where his team would meet once a week with an instructor, which eventually lead to the development of the Lower Mainland’s latest private academy, Spartan Academy (link to last week’s article), in conjunction with Trinity Western University’s women’s soccer team.

“Most of the players (who) have really started to master the game have either gone to a TSS-style academy or would attend a club initiated academy that would be an extra day of training,” said Cody. “I highly recommend it for the players who want to get to the level where they’re going to be recruited or going to have opportunities beyond youth soccer.”

According to Cody, the academies are beneficial because they tend to focus on technical skills that get lost in the club environment.

“You’re getting more individual focus on individual skills, technical skills,” he said. “From that, you can layer on tactics, you can layer on more team formation, but you really need that foundation.”

TSS ACADEMY

That technical training is what TSS Academy, which offers both supplemental and full-time training, is based on.

“You come to programs like ours to try to get a higher level of instruction and just to get additional training,” he said. “Really, we act as soccer tutors.”

The program follows a “strict curriculum” and also separates players into tiers based on skill level.

“We believe that players should be training with like skilled players,” said TSS head girls coach Brendan Quarry, adding that as players improve, they move up a tier. “Unlike the club environment where you make a team and stay on that team irrespective of your progress.”

“Kids just develop at different times and they need to be surrounded with like skilled players so ... then they start to advance and start to thrive a lot more than being in over their heads.”

ROMAN TULIS EUROPEAN SOCCER SCHOOL OF EXCELLENCE

Roman Tulis also divides its players based on skill level, but athletes need to try out for the program to ensure they’re a good match with the group’s skill set. According to Tulis, this allows every player the opportunity to not only learn from their peers, but to also take on the role as leader.

But regardless of which program parents and players choose, “whether it’s an academy or club environment, the No. 1 thing that they need to look for is the quality of instruction,” said Quarry, meaning coaches must be certified and experienced.

Findlay also added that the additional training must work with the player’s schedule and “avoid congestion,” so he doesn’t have multiple sessions in one day. This way the player is still incorporating rest and recovery and not overtraining, which leads to burnout.

“We’re all trying to do the same thing: to improve soccer in Canada — well first of all in the Lower Mainland,” Tulis admit about the growing academy options. “Our goal is that going forward players on the national team get better and better.”

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